xpd: If you want the game you wont care what the publisher does really.

friedCrumpet: http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=10/02/18/0719256

Have fun with that DRM.

I was going to buy Assassin's Creed II for the PS3, but ubisoft annoyed me buy only supplying the full game in the 'black edition', which I was willing to pay for.  But it was restricted to one retailer.  I wasn't happy with that, so I took a stance and didn't buy it.  I thought I might consider waiting till it arrives on PC, maybe buy on Steam or something.

But now they are going to include this most obtrusive DRM, I won't buy it.  I won't play it.  Even though I really desire to do so, until this DRM is removed I won't.  So I take exception to comments like this:

xpd: If you want the game you wont care what the publisher does really.

JMatt94:

3 Small in-game quests shouldn't stop you from getting the regular edition, I highly doubt they'd have any effect on the story.

paradoxsm: I won't touch anything with DRM after I had a bad experience with GTA IV.

I had to install
* Microsoft dot net
* Games for Windows live
* Rockstar social club
* SecuROM (horrid Sony DRM pig that tried to hook into my PC without even asking, spewing DLL files into %windir%/system32/)
(And it still wouldn't actually run)
* service pack 3 (even though reports show it works well with service pack 2.
* Online activation

And then it wouldn't run, my machine was fouled up and I had to re-image my entire system.

I don't mind paying my way but this is fast putting me right off. I have not bought a game since that nasty GTA IV junk and worked very hard to neuter my existing library as I'm getting tired of the re-installs, slow performance, Steam advertising and tracking and constant spinning of my DVD drive.

I played half-life last night for the first time without steam and it was an incredible experience. Very quick and smooth.

wazzageek:

paradoxsm: I won't touch anything with DRM after I had a bad experience with GTA IV.

I had to install
* Microsoft dot net
* Games for Windows live
* Rockstar social club
* SecuROM (horrid Sony DRM pig that tried to hook into my PC without even asking, spewing DLL files into %windir%/system32/)
(And it still wouldn't actually run)
* service pack 3 (even though reports show it works well with service pack 2.
* Online activation

And then it wouldn't run, my machine was fouled up and I had to re-image my entire system.

I don't mind paying my way but this is fast putting me right off. I have not bought a game since that nasty GTA IV junk and worked very hard to neuter my existing library as I'm getting tired of the re-installs, slow performance, Steam advertising and tracking and constant spinning of my DVD drive.

I played half-life last night for the first time without steam and it was an incredible experience. Very quick and smooth.

This is the reasoning that in the foreseeable future, I will be retaining my gaming to my console and not bother with building / buying a gaming rig...


Sorry - I know that the gaming experience can be vastly superior on a dedicated gaming PC, but if I cannot just put the disk in and the damn thing works, then I'm going to loose patience very quickly.

paradoxsm: And the reason why many of us are heading back to our roots (classic 8-bit gaming) retro-remakes, Dosbox or squeezing every last bit out of more recent (late 90's-early 00's) titles before the days of this the DRM frenzy.

Same rule that applies to music, you may not be able to play it on a machine in two years time in case that server goes down.

NonprayingMantis:sadly consoles seem to be headed that way now too.

not so much the configuringof your system (although if the console/game doens't like your router then you might have a lot of fiddling to do)  but rather the endless patches that seem to have amterialised ever since net connections for consoles bvecame common. i had to download a 500MB patch for motostorm befor eit would play.  It took over 24 hours on bigtime.

Published as part of our sister-site GamesIndustry.biz' widely-read weekly newsletter, the GamesIndustry.biz Editorial is a weekly dissection of one of the issues weighing on the minds of the people at the top of the games business. It appears on Eurogamer after it goes out to GI.biz newsletter subscribers.

John Riccitiello hates DRM. That's the rather surprising news from the Electronic Arts CEO this week - surprising not because there's anything particularly likeable about DRM, but because of his own firm's immense attachment to the widely disliked (and utterly useless) technology.

Admittedly, Riccitiello's comments go a lot deeper than that convenient headline. Despite the fact that he "hates" DRM, he goes on to attempt to justify it - comparing it with locks on your door or other necessary evils which we all require for security.

The comparison is utterly flawed. Locks and keys are indeed a trade-off which we make between convenience and security, but they are designed to protect our own security - not that of the company that sold us the door. There is a real, tangible advantage to the person being inconvenienced. That doesn't exist with DRM.

In fact, DRM is even worse. Not only is there no advantage to the end-user - in exchange for what can be pretty shocking inconvenience, which even Riccitiello confesses is "cumbersome". There's also no real advantage to the company responsible for inflicting this inconvenience, because contrary to Riccitiello's assertion, the DRM solutions used by the industry at large don't actually provide any meaningful protection from piracy.

The proof? Well, you can take the various charts and graphs presented by the companies trying to sell you DRM with which to lock up your products - almost none of whom even claim to be able to protect you past the first few days on sale, and frankly, even those claims are rather spurious. On the other side of the balance, you can put the fact that the Bittorrent "swarms" for Spore, EA's most recent and most controversial DRM-locked product, were among the biggest ever seen for a new videogame.

This alone makes another of Riccitiello's assertions look a little peculiar. He reckons that of those who kicked up a storm about Spore's DRM - which spilled from negative Amazon reviews into the specialist press, and even into the mainstream media in a small way - "about half" were pirates.

Why, exactly, would pirates care about Spore's DRM? If your intention was to pirate the game, there was a perfectly functional copy, totally unencumbered by DRM, sitting up there for you on Bittorrent - for free - on the day of launch. No pirate, with the possible exception of the person who originally uploaded the game to the Internet, ever saw Spore's DRM.

This is the essential, deeply uncomfortable truth about DRM which I and many, many other commentators have been banging on about for years. No pirate on the planet gives a damn about it, because they're happily using an unencumbered copy. The only people who ever see DRM - the only people who ever suffer the "cumbersome" inconvenience of these deeply flawed technologies - are your legitimate, paying, long-suffering customers.

Of course, it's not like the videogames industry stands alone in making this mistake. The film industry has spent years putting unskippable ads on the front of its DVDs, forcing legitimate, paying customers to endure lengthy, over-wrought messages about the evils of piracy. Had they downloaded the film from the Internet or picked up a pirate DVD, of course, they wouldn't have to put up with such nonsense. The irony is harsh, and continues to fly completely over the heads of whatever clueless individuals demand the inclusion of these ridiculous ads.

The music business, too, has made a similar error. You may recall that Sony and other companies spent ages experimenting with ways to prevent CDs from being copied onto computers - completely ignoring the fact that most people had upgraded their portable CD players to MP3 players. Those who legitimately bought music were being punished. Those who downloaded it from Napster (as then was) or other file-sharing services experienced no such restrictions.